Umm

I'm not really sure words can do this next photo justice so here it is...

The inspector

Apparently, Lucas doesn't trust us when it comes to buying a car seat. Back in late August, when we were about to install the new car seat, he performed his own inspection. That's responsibility right there. Though someone should probably tell him it's made for sitting.

Day at the beach (well, sort of)

A couple of weekends ago, Lucas and I had the place all to ourselves since Marilu went with to Toronto with Tanya to see the musical Dirty Dancing. Yeah, Dirty Dancing is a musical now. Makes you throw up a little in your mouth, doesn't it?

Anyway, since the two of us had the run of the place that weekend, I decided to get Lucas over his fear of water. It used to be that he loved anything to do with water. Get him in the bathtub and he would splash up a storm and he giggled if you sprayed him with the shower head. Over time, though, he somehow became terrified of the thing and really anything else that would splash him. We brought him to a little water park/playground about a month ago and he just freaked when water got sprayed on him. So with that in mind, I began my quest to cure him of his aquaphobia.

Step 1. Set up an oscillating sprinkler in the backyard.
Step 2. Run through it a couple of times myself to let him realize it wasn't going to kill him.
Step 3. Repeat Step 2 but hold him in my arms to help him build confidence.
Step 4. Put him on the ground and encourage him to run to me in the dry area when the water would start spraying on him.
Step 5. Step back and let him have fun.

Thankfully, it didn't take long to get to Step 5 as you'll see in the photos below.

As we've seen in the Olympics, swimmers have their pre-race warmups. Unlike Michael Phelps, Lucas's warmup involves standing in the living room, chewing on a plastic maraca. Hey, whatever works for ya, I guess.


After we got outside, Lucas cautiously took stock of the situation. "Hmm, this doesn't look too bad."


Lucas taunts the sprinkler in a tauntingly taunting baby fashion.


Things didn't go well at first. Lucas fled to the corner of the yard.


Never one to be deterred, Lucas returned to battle and slayed the savage sprinkler.


Afterwards, Lucas posed in his cape, as all good warriors do after battle.


We wrap up this post with a couple of videos filling in some of the blanks from the above pictures.

Goblin in the cabinet

Lucas has always liked climbing into things, from boxes to drawers to the subject of the following video, cabinets. However, lately he's been trying to hide as well. In particular, he likes to walk into the bathroom when the light is off, close the door, and stand there in the dark. Odd child.

Yesterday, Marilu took an amusing video of Lucas sitting in a cabinet playing peek-a-boo with the door. I think the cutest part is when you can see his tiny fingers sticking out.

Happy boy!

When taking pictures of Lucas, or any young kid I suppose, a lot of luck is involved. They don't much care for sitting still while you try and get that perfect picture so it sometimes takes many shots before you get just the right one. Or in cases like the one below, you may think you have the perfect picture until you upload it and realize it is more blurry than it looked on the back of the digital camera. Nonetheless, I think his facial expression was great here and more than made up for the fact that the picture itself isn't crystal clear. What do you think? Was it worth posting?

One (or four) for the road

I'm going to be driving down to Massachusetts today (in less than an hour, probably) for my Aunt Julie's funeral, and I won't be back until Sunday night so no updates until then. Before I go though, I wanted to put up a couple of pictures of Lucas to tide you all over. :)

Here's a shot of Team Cool. Unfortunately, the flash is covering half of my face but that probably just improves the photo overall.


Facial expression notwithstanding, I think this picture does such a good job of making Lucas look like a little man. On a completely unrelated note, this is the 4700th photo (or video) I've taken on this camera. I'd say we got our money's worth.


Here's a photo from the new horror film Night of the Adorable Zombies.


Finally, Lucas stares in amazement at the new mini-fridge. Hey, I gotta have somewhere to put all my homebrewed beer. For the record, he was much more entertained by the box than the actual fridge.


Have a good weekend, all. Talk to you again on Sunday or Monday!

Farewell

Earlier tonight, I received the news that my great Aunt Julie had passed away yesterday evening. To say she'd lived a full life is an understatement when you learn that she was a remarkable 103 years old. Even so, it's a big loss as everyone in the family loved her. The last time we saw her was around Christmas last year, and I swear she had more energy than me. Up until she went in the hospital, she was still living on her own and taking care of herself. On top of that, I don't believe I ever saw her in a bad mood. Maybe happiness really does extend your life, in which case I better stop grumbling about work so often.

In any case, I wanted to dedicate this entry to my Aunt Julie. As long as we had you, it wasn't nearly long enough. I love you and miss you, Aunt Julie. Take care wherever you might be.

Walking Extravaganza, Part 2

Jumping back a bit to August 8, we see a few more video of young Mr. Lucas walking. In the first, he models the basketball outfit his Uncle Steven gave him as a gift.



In Video 2, he struts around in much less clothing, and toward the end, he decides to chug quite a bit of milk.

Oh, behave!

If you thought last week's shirt was bad, check out this one.


Marilu refuses to let me leave the house with him wearing it. Can't imagine why.

Cars and shirts, oh my!

As promised earlier in the week, here's a picture of the latest addition to our family...


Nice and shiny, huh? Just wait until winter to take the luster off that.

I've been meaning to post this next picture for a while since it's just so great, but like most things in my life, I keep forgetting. As a belated birthday gift, Lucas's godfather Jason got him a couple of t-shirts from a Web site called T-shirt Hell. As you can probably gather from the name, the shirts aren't very politically correct. See below as Lucas models one of them. He hasn't worn the second one yet, and that one's even worse. :)


I'm including this last picture since Lucas's face made me laugh out loud. Doesn't he look like he's up to something (which he likely is)? And don't worry, we don't normally let him play with plastic bags.

Mischievous Little Man

As you can see, Lucas has not only figured out how to open the cupboard, but he pretty much makes himself at home inside of them. In addition to all the toys we pick up at the end of every day, we have recently added pots and pans to that nightly ritual.

Back to the farm

Breaking news...we picked up our new vehicle, a black Pontiac Torrent earlier tonight. Marilu drove it home and is already in love with the XM satellite radio. I've yet to drive it (other than the test drive), but I'll likely be using it in the morning since there's no child seat in it yet. I took a picture of it in the driveway, but my camera is upstairs so I'll try and get that posted tomorrow.

At the end of July, Marilu, Lucas, and I made a return trip to the Canadian Agriculture Museum/Experimental Farm (originally seen in this post). Just like last time, Lucas had a grand old time with the cows, particularly the calves, since you could touch them. Whenever the calf in the picture below would try and lick Lucas, he'd squeal with delight.


Heck, see for yourself.



Another cute picture with a cow. I think it's safe to say Lucas is an animal lover.

Number One Reason to Have a Baby

For all my single readers, I know that having a child can seem like quite a burden, and believe me, from time to time, it can be. However, as Lucas shows in the video below, it can provide magical experiences.



I may never have to leave my chair again.

Update

Pictures are working again so see a couple posts below to see the glorious amount of beer I bottled on Wednesday night. A new video will be up VERY soon.

Blame Google

Two days after I paid to re-upgrade my photo storage, it's still not working. I'm going to send an email to customer support and try and figure out what the heck is the problem here since that's just plain bad service. I'm also going to explore alternate options going forward. Although the blog gives me the best opportunity to write about what's happening in our lives, an alternative option like Flickr allows me to be lazier and just comment on photos. So we'll see...

Can't post!

Well, I can post entries, I just can't upload any photos. I store my photos on Google for $20/year for 10 GB of space, and the renewal just came up this week. However, I changed my credit card a couple of months ago and got a new number so my account didn't renew automatically and ran out. I just went in and renewed it manually a little bit ago, but it could take up to a day for it to register the change so no pictures for now. I do plan to post tomorrow night with brand new pictures of the little guy so keep an eye out for that.

Non-Lucas News

Two important bits of news from the family here. First off, I don't know if I mentioned it previously, but for Father's Day, Marilu paid for me to brew my own beer at a local place that takes care of all the tedious parts of the process for you. Last night, after two weeks of fermenting (or whatever it does), I bottled my beer. I brought the 96 half liter bottles in the living room and took the following picture.

That's just perfection right there. For anyone that's curious, it's a Czech Pilsner, and it's deeeee-licious.


The other news is slightly bigger: we bought a car! Well, technically, we've just put a deposit down on it so far, but Marilu will be going in to do the paperwork tomorrow, and we'll have it by Tuesday. It's a Pontiac Torrent, which I believe falls under the category of crossover SUV. We were going to get a Pontiac Vibe, which is a hatchback, but after sitting in the Torrent, we just couldn't pass up the extra space in the back.

For those of you not familiar with the Torrent (or its Chevy equivalent, the Equinox), here's a picture of the vehicle.


For the record, ours is black.

Random photos from July

July 20

He may be over 13 months old now, but that doesn't mean he has a firm grasp on staying neat while eating. Here we see the aftermath of dinner.



July 21

In order to keep him distracted, I let Lucas play with my old Nintendo Gameboy. It only kept his attention momentarily as he doesn't understand yet how videogames can suck hours out of your life. With any luck, I'll be able to keep him from getting addicted to them when he gets older (unlike, ahem, me). Though at the moment, he's still obsessed with the phone so that's probably not a whole lot better.


July 26

We had lunch at a small English pub/restaurant near us that we've never been to called the Cheshire Cat. The food was good, and the beer I had, Fullers ESB, was excellent. Among other things Lucas had for lunch, he ate a lemon. This isn't the first time he's eaten lemon, but I believe it's the first time we caught it on camera. Unlike me, Lucas doesn't seem to have any problem eating lemons as his face never changes. I, on the other hand, squint and make that sourpuss face so commonly associated with eating something like that.



July 30

Sometimes, it just makes sense to put your head inside a drum. You gotta be 1 to understand.

Our little warrior

Today was a holiday here in Ontario so we went to a park in Barrhaven (suburb south of Ottawa) that has an area with lots of water fountains, sprinklers, etc for kids to play in. I'm sure there's a better way to describe it, but suffice to say kids get wet and have fun.

Lucas was of two minds of the place. He thought the fountains looked interesting from a distance, but a couple of times he was too close when the water shot out and soaked him. When this happened, he yelled, cried, and came running to me. I think it's a combination of his known fear of the shower nozzle (ie, the water dropping down on him) and the fact that the water was cold. I'm told this is a normal reaction for kids his age so hopefully he'll get over it soon and start having fun.

While Lucas was walking through the area (yes, he's mostly walking now), he lost his footing or something and smacked face first into the concrete. As you can imagine, this didn't feel well and he started shrieking. Surprisingly, he got over it fairly quickly, but he got his first war wounds. Below, see Lucas's first real scratches (not counting the self-inflicted ones he accidentally gave himself with his sharp little claws). Based on his attitude the rest of the day, it looks a lot worse than it feels. If it's hard to see, he has a couple of scratches on his nose and a bit of a gash just above his upper lip. Makes him look like a tough guy. :)


Not long after, he spent a while digging in the sand next to Logan. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this recently, but he really enjoys sand. This Saturday, when it was just me and him while Marilu was in Toronto, we went to the local park and he spent about 30-40 minutes just digging and playing in the sand.


One other thing of note from the "water" park, especially for my American readers. Here in Canada, the squirrels are black. Well, at least in Ontario. I'd never seen black squirrels before I moved here so I don't know if you can find them elsewhere in the States. Anyway, just a "how about that?" comment. You may need to click on the picture for an enlarged view.


This afternoon, I took one of my t-shirts and put in on Lucas. It didn't fit very well (obviously), but then he squirmed around inside it and somehow forced his head into one of the sleeves. We were laughing so hard at how he looked (Marilu probably put it best that he looked like a little Jawa from Star Wars) that I barely was able to get a picture in time. Hope you find it as amusing as we did.

Walking Extravaganza!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I'm about to post 6 videos of Lucas walking so that's gotta be worth at least 1200. As a result, I'll keep the talky-talky to a minimum. In a nutshell, here's the first good videos we have of Lucas walking. There's also a couple of short ones in there of him falling on his butt which are good for a chuckle. And lest you think his desires for the camera have changed recently, nope, he's mad as hell, and he wants the damn camera.













Raise your hand if #5 was your favorite. Me too. Oh, and believe it or not, he doesn't cry uncontrollably everytime he walks. Since I've got him all to myself all of Saturday and half of Sunday, I'll be sure to try and get some more walking videos where he doesn't look or sound like something out of a horror film.